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Food systems are increasingly embedding algorithmic traceability systems that combine blockchain infrastructures, AI-supported verification, IoT sensors, QR-enabled disclosure, and digital chain-of-custody tools. These systems are commonly promoted as instruments of transparency, fraud prevention, and consumer reassurance. Their deeper theoretical significance, however, lies in the way they reorganise the social foundations through which food becomes trusted. Existing approaches to food trust often emphasise interpersonal confidence, brand reputation, certification labels, and institutional credibility. Yet these approaches do not fully explain what happens when trust claims are mediated by automated records, distributed ledgers, sensor-generated evidence, and platform-based verification interfaces. The central problem addressed in this article is whether algorithmic traceability merely increases information or whether it changes the nature of food trust itself. This article develops an original theory of algorithmic food trust transformation. It argues that algorithmic traceability shifts food trust from a relational and reputational regime toward a system-mediated regime organised around visibility, verification, and institutional confidence. The article does not report new empirical data; instead, it builds theory by synthesising research on food trust, traceability, blockchain, digital transparency, certification, consumer behaviour, and food governance. The proposed theory identifies three sequential mechanisms. Algorithmic visibility makes selected aspects of the supply chain seeable; verification converts food claims into auditable assertions; and institutional confidence encourages consumers and market actors to rely on the functioning of technical and regulatory systems rather than on direct personal knowledge. These mechanisms do not eliminate trust, but they relocate it from persons and brands toward infrastructures, platforms, certifiers, and governance arrangements. The article contributes to food sociology and trust studies by showing that algorithmic traceability is not simply a technical improvement in supply chain information. It rewires the foundations of food trust and creates new vulnerabilities linked to data integrity, institutional legitimacy, platform control, and the opacity of verification systems. The theory therefore calls for a more critical understanding of digital food trust as a sociotechnical achievement rather than a natural consequence of transparency.